Foureleven wrote earlier this year about the show “Sister Wives” and its portrayals of women in plural marriage. Now the family depicted in that TLC series is back in the news: they’re challenging Utah’s 1890 anti-bigamy laws in federal court (the Utah state constitution also forbids polygamy). Kody Brown, his four wives and sixteen children moved to Nevada recently after being the target of a criminal investigation in Utah following their “outing.” If you’re not familiar with their story, there’s a good summary here from CNN’s OnReligion blog.

My problem with polygamy is that it’s the most patriarchal and inegalitarian form of marriage, which becomes painfully obvious when you listen to women from the Fundamentalist Mormon tradition—including Brown’s wives—talk about their husband’s spiritual authority over them and their “happy helpmeet” role in family life (to say nothing of the husband’s privilege of having multiple sexual partners while the wives may have only one). I don’t for a second buy that women are empowered by sharing a husband. But I don’t think what they’re doing is criminal.

In certain FLDS communities, like the Longing for Zion “compound” led by Warren Jeffs—the model for “Big Love”‘s Juniper Creek and Roman Grant—the forced marriage of underage girls demands criminal prosecution. But the Browns and many other “mainstream” polygamists do not commit these crimes. They are simply consenting adults calling themselves a married family, as their lawyer, Jonathan Turley, a professor of law at George Washington University wrote in a recent New York Times editorial:

The family has not been accused of child abuse or other crime, in almost a year of being under criminal investigation. With such allegations stripped away, the only thing remaining is a family that does not look like those of other Utah citizens. The question is whether that is enough to declare them criminals.

While widely disliked, if not despised, polygamy is just one form among the many types of plural relationships in our society. It is widely accepted that a person can have multiple partners and have children with such partners. But the minute that person expresses a spiritual commitment and “cohabits” with those partners, it is considered a crime.

There’s no compelling reason for the state to intervene in these peoples’ lives. Honestly, if the state were to prosecute every unequal marriage or misogynist religion, belief system, or living situation there would be precious little time or money for it to do anything else. The fact that the state gives a pass to other repressive lifestyles and religions and only singles out an FLDS family makes it look an awful lot like religious persecution.

Despite this, leftists and civil libertarians have been slow to defend or support the rights of polygamous families like the Browns, despite their stated commitment to minimizing government interference in Americans’ private lives. Why? Turley writes:

The reason might be strategic: some view the effort to decriminalize polygamy as a threat to the recognition of same-sex marriages or gay rights generally. After all, many who opposed the decriminalization of homosexual relations used polygamy as the culmination of a parade of horribles. In his dissent in Lawrence, Justice Antonin Scalia said the case would mean the legalization of “bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality and obscenity.” [ed: Masturbation? SRSLY?]

Justice Scalia is right in one respect, though not intentionally. Homosexuals and polygamists do have a common interest: the right to be left alone as consenting adults. Otherwise he’s dead wrong. There is no spectrum of private consensual relations — there is just a right of privacy that protects all people so long as they do not harm others.

Scalia’s slippery slope argument here is a fallacy, as most slippery slope arguments are (for a distinguished jurist, it’s embarrassing how often Scalia falls back on this particular fallacy). No one is arguing that if we decriminalize polygamy, we must then decriminalize every other act under the sun.

If consenting adults want to live together and raise children in what they feel is a spiritually significant relationship, who is the state to tell them otherwise? They aren’t applying for multiple marriage licenses. They aren’t even asking the state to redefine marriage to include theirs. They’re simply asking for the right to conduct their private and religious lives without being prosecuted. Sure, their religion and private lives may fall outside societal norms, but that’s not a valid reason to criminalize their behavior. Like the anti-sodomy laws overturned by the Lawrence decision, Utah’s anti-polygamy laws date back to a time when pre-marital sex, homosexual sex, and even other religions were banned by the state (Don’t believe me on that last one? Ask a Native American, whose religious practice was outright banned in the 19th century West). Those laws no longer make sense culturally, and judicial precedent is not on their side.

Or, as the Brown’s lawyer put it: “Can they be prosecuted because their private relationships are obnoxious to other citizens?” I say no.

I wouldn’t exactly call Scalia a “distinguished” jurist. Infamous might be more accurate.

It’s not a choice I’d make and it’s not one I’d like to see my kids make, but the way other people define religious marriage has no impact on mine. Still, it seems unlikely to me that if polygamy is decriminalized, Mormons and others wouldn’t try to get such marriages legalized completely. It seems like the next logical step.

@MM: The FLDS might try to get polygamy legalized although they’d have a very hard row to hoe if they did, especially in Utah, where the LDS church pretty much runs the state. If they did, I really don’t think I’d give a fuck one way or the other, provided polyandry was legalized as well.

As for Scalia, he’s distinguished in the sense that being a SCOTUS justice distinguishes you in the judicial world. Otherwise the man’s just a gaseous windbag full of antiquated hateration.

I do believe we should support polygamy, but I have a very difficult time doing so on behalf of the FLDS. If I could be confident that the girls weren’t being brainwashed from birth and could truly consent, then it’s not a problem. But I don’t think they truly can freely consent which turns it into rape by marriage if you ask me.

I hate very much that the issue with communities like Bountiful et al is always framed as a problem with polygamy when really it is a problem with a very toxic form of patriarchy. The children are isolated and brainwashed, they aren’t exposed to the rest of society, the boys are abandoned to make their own way as teens, and the girls are married off to an old fart not of their choosing as soon as legally possible. Blech. Makes me want to projectile vomit.

There are so many volitile relationships within our natural order of things, I think we should stop judging and look at the happiness these people portray. Live and let live, we have no right as earthlings to judge others. I believe it is stated that the children when of age have their choice whether they choose to live in a monogamist or a polygamist relationship. As a matter of fact one of the young lads in a plural relationship was asked this question and he chose the monogamist relationship, so seems to me no form of brain washing occured in his home. We couldn’t possibly know what goes on behind closed doors unless we placed camera’s behind them which would violate their rights. Rather than being concerned and pushing my way of life on others, I’m more concerned about the people in high towers sending our young off to fight needless wars. The gentleman featured on the reality show, is quite a handsome gent, not some old fart, so quite a good catch I would say and he is not going to waste for sure. Just kidding…..

As someone who supports gay marriage, I have to accept I can’t have it both ways. If we allow all kinds of relationships, then we have to take in the polygamists, also. As much as it horrifies me to think of one man, a handful of wives and tons of kids, I have to deal with it. Like I tell those offended by gay marriage- fine, if you don’t like it, don’t do it, no one is forcing them to marry a same sex partner. So, as long as I don’t have to become one of five wives that service one man, I’ll survive.

I’m with wondering- I don’t have so much a problem with polygamy, but I have a major problem with the fact that girls are brainwashed to think polygamy is their way to salvation and that they should be happy to be married at very young ages. If consenting adults who have had access to a full range of information and opinions on the subject consent to polygamy, I have no objection and neither should the state. But children cannot consent. I’d even argue that 18 year olds who have never known anything but polygamy can’t really consent- they are hampered by their lack of exposure to the outside world.

Of course, I tend to think closed religious communities are a bad thing in and of themselves, as abuses are more likely go unexposed. Open systems are healthier than closed systems.

A woman should be free to marry a man who is married to, or will be married to, or will be at the same time marrying, other women (and/or men). She should also be free to marry multiple men (or women). For this to be possible, we have to have gender equality under the law, the right NOT to marry, and the right to divorce. This will help protect people from getting tricked or trapped into abusive marriages.

@KJ: Except for the fact that we’re talking about polygamy, your comment perfectly describes the fate of women and children in every conservative, patriarchial religious community out there: evangelical Christianity, traditional Catholicism, Orthodox Judaism, fundamentalist Islam, etc., particularly when you say that it’s difficult for people raised in that community to choose a different worldview when they’ve only ever been exposed to one.

The one thing I will say about the Browns is that because they are not isolating their family, their children will have a wider range of experience than children in the FLDS compounds will and perhaps be more open to choosing a non-polygamous lifestyel. But what you said about closed communities in general is right on.

From a feminist perspective, I feel like polygamy too quickly becomes a scapegoat or short-hand for patriarchy or kyriarchy and folks begin to confuse the family form itself with the ideology of those who practice it. I don’t think there’s anything inherently anti-feminist or anti-equality about a poly relationship in which there is one man, more than one woman, and the children they care for. It only becomes (or should only become) a human rights issue when OTHER red flags are present … and then it’s not the marriage, per se, it’s the other red flags. Is the relationship abusive? Is there a lack of consent or coerced consent? Are children being abused? All of those are issues for which we already have existing laws and could deal with those issues while legalizing group marriage.

I really hate it when poly relationships are used as a scare tactic in the same-sex marriage debate, because I feel like it pushes activists to protest “no! no! we’re not like THEM!” and just causes the injustice to iterate out down the line

I really hate it when poly relationships are used as a scare tactic in the same-sex marriage debate, because I feel like it pushes activists to protest “no! no! we’re not like THEM!” and just causes the injustice to iterate out down the line

This exactly, Anna. It just encourages an us versus them mentality, where marginalised groups throw other marginalised groups under the bus.

I believe this even happens within the LGBTQ community, when “mainstream” gay (and sometimes lesbian) groups distance themselves from trans* groups and trans* concerns because they don’t want to be associated with something they think is too weird/radical and might hamper their cause.

These “polygamous” patriarchs usually marry their first wife legally and then have multiple non-legally binding marriage ceremonies with subsequent wives. As long as the polygamists aren’t committing actual bigamy, the state shouldn’t intervene. It’s no different from a guy having children with his wife and his mistress. As long as the wife and the mistresses put up with it, the state shouldn’t get involved.

@BeckySharper RE: The Browns not isolating their kids. This is true. The older daughters were shown on the show talking about how they are surprised that their mothers don’t have a problem with it, that it seems normal to them because it’s their family, but that they don’t want to be in a polygamist marriage when they grow up. At least one of the wives also talks about how she grew up in the regular LDS church, but chose the polygamist lifestyle for herself and her family doesn’t get it. So this particular family, at least, is not brainwashed or doing any brainwashing.

My mind’s just been blown by the fact that Native American religions were actually outlawed. (I don’t know why I should be surprised, considering all the other CRAZY ways they were persecuted, but I am).

I actually really enjoyed the show SisterWives, even though it didn’t depict a lifestyle I would want. I thought it was fascinating to see how their lives were organized. And I didn’t find it at all offensive – a little weird, yes, but not *actually* offensive, since all the women were free to make the choice to marry the guy (at least as free, as Becky pointed out, as anyone who grows up strongly rooted in a particular tradition). But if polygamy is legal, polyandry definitely should be too.

It seems patently obvious that polygamy (real or perceived, cohabiting or otherwise) should not be a criminal offense. The real question is, should marriage benefits be extended to unlimited partners of any one individual? I cannot settle this one in my head. We shouldn’t discriminate against genuine relationships with multiple partners (and there’s no legal way to make a distinction in the case of super-patriarchal religions), but there also seems to be the risk that groups of partners would continue to grow beyond what we might call a “genuine” marital relationship, simply to extend the benefits.

The logistics of legalizing polygamy are far more complicated and far reaching than same-sex marriage. A marriage contract is written into between two partners as a binding business contract, although many fail to recognize the validity of the contract until they are faced with divorce. In a marriage contract in the United States the assets and liabilities of the partnership are shared equally unless amended with prenuptial or postnuptial agreements. One partnership must be settled and the division of assets agreed upon before each party is available to enter into a new contract with a new partner. In the case of polygamy the marriage contract becomes much more convoluted and difficult to maintain the equality among all members. The contract will need to be redefined and amended each time a member joins the marriage or leaves the marriage with each partner willing to submit a portion of the assets and liabilities to the other members of the corporation so to speak. Does the husband maintain 50% for himself while his wives divvy up the remaining portion amongst themselves? Where is the equality and balance in that? Polygamy is more than just love and sex; it is a contract that affects the quality of life for every member involved. Before we jump on legalizing it we must consider the short term and long term effects on not only the families and society but the redefinition of the marriage contract.

[...] and understandably so. I’ve seen several recent feminist critiques of polygamy, pointing to its misogynist history and relationship with the Mormon church. But this isn’t the only context for polygamous or polyamorous relationships. In my opinion, [...]